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The exclusive role of natural ecosystems is a key factor in the maintenance of the biospheric equilibrium. The current global crisis is largely caused by their dramatic decline by 43% in the past hundred years. Ignoring the immutable laws and limitations which determine the existence of all living things in the biosphere could lead humanity to an ecological catastrophe. This book presents the ecological, demographic, economic and socio-psychological manifestations of the global crisis and outlines the immutable laws and limitations which determine the existence of all living things in the biosphere. The authors are eminently qualified to write about the problems associated with the global crisis and consider the causes behind humanity's conflict with its environment. V. Danilov-Danilian, Associate of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Russia's former Minister of the Environment, and K. Losev, professor at Moscow State university, are leading Russian ecologists and I. Reyf is a journalist who specializes in ecology and global development. Dr. Danilov-Danilian works on the economics of nature management, economic and mathematical model building, sustainable development theory and ecology. Dr Losev is the chief researcher and head of the division of the VINITI. All the authors have published numerous papers, articles and books on such subjects as glaciology, hydrology, environment studies, global change and sustainable development.

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It is not possible to understand the apparent stability of the Earth's climate and environment unless we can fully understand how the best possible environmental conditions may be maintained for life to exist. Human colonization of areas with natural biota, for industrial or agricultural activities, will lead to degradation of those natural communities and violation of the BRE (biotic regulation of the environment) principle. Thus to maintain an environment on Earth that is suitable for life it is necessary to preserve and allow the natural recovery of natural biotic communities, both in the oceans and on land. This book is devoted to a quantitative version of the BRE concept, and is built on a foundation of modern scientific knowledge accumulated in the fields of physics and biology.

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During recent decades the stirring up of the processes of globalization practically in all spheres of present-day civilization activities has aggravated and brought forth numerous problems resulting from the nature-society (N-S) interaction. It has become apparent that to solve these problems it is necessary to develop new concepts and approaches to the interpretation of global environmental changes that would enable one to select the first-priority directions in studies and to reliably assess the state of the nature-society system (NSS). One of these priorities is to predict global climate change. The growing interest in the problem of global climate change, determined by its practical importance and by available contra dictory estimates of the anthropogenic contribution to climate change, necessitates a systematization of knowledge of and data on the observed climate change and causes of this change. Despite an enormous amount of projects and programmes of studies of past and present climatic trends, the problem of reliable prediction of future climate change remains far from being solved. Emissions to the atmosphere of greenhouse gases (GHGs), mainly carbon dioxide, is considered as one of the main causes of an expected climate warming resulting in sufficiently negative consequences for humankind. Therefore, an attempt has been made in this book to construct a formalized technology to assess the levelof the greenhouse effectdue to anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide as well as the effects of other gas components.

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Professor Kondratyev and his team consider the concept of global warming due to the greenhouse effect and put forward a new approach to the problem of assessing the impact of anthropogenic processes. Considering data on both sources and sinks for atmospheric carbon and various conceptual schemes of the global carbon dioxide cycle, they suggest a new approach to studies of the problem of the greenhouse effect. They assess the role of different types of soil and vegetation in the assimilation of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and discuss models of the atmosphere ocean gas exchange and its role in the carbon dioxide cycle, paying special attention to the role of the Arctic Basin. The authors also consider models of other global atmospheric cycles for a range of atmospheric constituents, and conclude by drawing together a range of scenarios on modelling the global carbon cycle.

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This interdisciplinary book parameterizes the global ecodynamic process. The discussion considers basic global problems of the Nature-Society-System (NSS) dynamics and reviews key problems of ensuring its sustainable development. The book includes an analysis of trends in changing ecological systems and estimates characteristics of current global ecodynamics. The authors propose a new approach to NSS numerical modelling and demonstrate the results of modelling the dynamics of this system's characteristics.